The following article appeared in the November 1968 issue of Esquire Magazine. It contains the usual snarky references to wrestling, and the author tries to show off his vocabulary here and there. The attitude of authors of many articles like this is the assumption that the reader would know nothing about pro wrestling. He would probably be surprised.
Still, some very entertaining quotes from the likes of J. C. Dykes, Rip Hawk, promoter Joe Murnick, Sandy Scott, Johnny Heidmann, Nikita Mulkovitch, and others. Thanks to Gateway contributor Brack Beasley for sharing this article with us.
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STOMPING AT THE GREENSBORO COLISEUM
Where good in white trunks conquers evil in black trunks and nobody gives a Schlitz for Gene McCarthy
by Larry Bonko, Esquire Magazine, November 1968
It is maybe thirty minutes before the main event. Make that Main Event! Subtlety is for the Lowenbrau ads. This is professional wrestling. The posters look undressed without here and there: Main Event! The Masked Infernos versus The Scott Brothers! Four Big Bouts! Smoking in the Lobby!
Thirty minutes or so before the Main Event! Masked Inferno Number One is sitting around in what he calls his ordinary, every-day street mask. It is a cloth number in cobalt blue trimmed in black. Very nice.
This is the mask with an extra large hole around the mouth to accommodate a slice of toast or a serving of grits. "They wear the masks to breakfast," confides J. C. Dykes.
Dykes is dressed in tights and a shirt the precise shade of his hair. Type O positive red. Dykes is working with his boys on this night. Usually they go on without him.
Dykes says his guys will wear those damn masks to bed, too, if he hears about somebody prowling the motel and asking questions. The Infernos come from Europe. That is all you get from Dykes.
Dykes said it is easier to get Howard Hughes's phone number than to find out more about his guys.
Consider Dykes, and perhaps Dumas pere was not so demanding of his man in the mask. Yet with Count Mattioli, or whoever it was in the iron mask, the consequence was the wrath of Louis XIV. With the Infernos the mask is making a living, baby, a living.
When the semi-windup is on, The Infernos start to strap on ghastly leather masks. Work clothes. The masks have thick laces in the back. Dykes pulls the laces tight. Maximum security is a fishermen's-bend knot.
If some punk in the ring pulls off a mask, it is all over for J. C. Dykes and The Infernos. Bye-bye to the big money. Bye-bye to $70,000 per.
The masks are their bag, the schtick. If the mask comes off, it is finish to twenty-nine months of building the act in places like Norfolk, Virginia, Fayetteville, North Carolina, and Charleston, West Virginia.
Suppose somebody high up in government spills it about Failsafe. We'll recover. Suppose somebody finds out when Zsa Zsa Gabor was born. She'll live through it.
If the masks go, it is End of Act. It is back to the preliminaries. Or worse. Back to wrestling Victor, the 540-pound bear, or Terrible Teddy, who is also a wrestling bear.
Dykes looks after his boys and their masks because he is the manager. He is what the other wrestlers call a "piece" man because he gets a piece of the action.
Once in a while, if the price is right, Dykes will wrestle at the elbow of his guys in the six-man tag matches. This is bad business for the people who clean up arenas. When Dykes is in the ring the customers throw things at him, including large chairs. Dykes is not bad when it comes to the double wristlock or the chicken wing or the inside toehold. But what Dykes does best is talk.
"We are the best and the most talked about and the most publicized tag team in the whole world," he says. All the tag teams are modest like that. Go ahead and ask The Amazing Zuma and Haystack Calhoun what they think. Go ahead and ask The Fabulous Kangaroos.
